The Marine Band played, Truman watched Acheson sign for the United States, Bevin for Great Britain and the other foreign ministers for their respective countries. For those who had worked to deliver it, this was a moment of high emotion. “The United States was for the first time formally entering into the outside world, abandoning isolationism,” said William Edwards of the British embassy. Privately, Bevin had warned his Cabinet colleagues barely two months earlier that final drafts of the treaty looked excessively “feeble”, including Article 5, which he said fell short of British hopes for a definite commitment to go to war if Europe was attacked. But even a weakened treaty was better than none at all.
Citatet är hämtat från Deterring Armageddon – A biography of Nato, Peter Apps (Wildfire 2024). Ernest Bevin undertecknade som brittisk utrikesminister Nato-fördraget. Han hade varit drivande i att få det till stånd.